Dinosaurs died out due to fire 66 million years ago.

That sounds pretty obvious. But it wasn't because of the interpretation of evidence. The charcoal / soot required as evidence was not available.

In a nutshell.

Robertson et al 2013 explain that it was merely a misinterpretation. The charcoal is simply dilluted by the debris from the Chicxulub impact. They state that when the ejecta reentered the atmosphere it, it caused intense radiation that set most if not all vegatation on at fire on a global scale

The article suggests that it really is 66Mya with remarkable accuracy (+/- 11kya).

Due to a paywall I can't access the article mentioned in the OP but from the abstract:

" Preliminary modeling showed that the reentry of ejecta would have caused a global infrared (IR) pulse sufficient to ignite global fires within a few hours of the Chicxulub impact."

Is this referring to a previous paper? Is the global firestorm a well established idea?

I think the global firestorm is a pretty well established idea, a natural consequence of a bolide that big. I suppose the angle and speed of impact are also important, and given the evidence for global fires they are revising those estimates to account for the fires, and vice versa.

I downloaded the Robertson et al. 2013 article and they do not mention 66 million years ago.

Impact of an asteroid, perhaps the most widely accepted theory at the moment. It is suggested that a meteorite hit the earth at the end of the Cretaceous, causing huge quantities of material to be thrown into the atmosphere, reducing the light, decreasing atmospheric temperature and preventing plants from photosynthesising. Without food herbivores would be unable to survive, and consequently the carnivore dinosaurs would no food to eat, hence their extinction.

I wonder if that was before or after the caterpillar infestation ? ....

There has also been a suggestion that caterpillars ate all the plants, leaving nothing for the herbivores to munch.

and this one ....

There was a decrease in sexual activity, and not enough dinosaurs were born.

leads me to my personal favourite theory ... that all the female dinosaurs across ALL species revolted against the males by saying " not tonite dear, I have a headache"

Dave

PS .... further contemplation leads me to 2 other theories concerning a decrease in sexual activity....

Referring to the previously posted cartoon....

theory 1 .... that the smoking caused impotence and or ...
theory 2 .... they were really smoking whacky baccy and that was more fun than procreation

Sorry guys ... just couldnt resist :)
all in fun ( life is too short to take it seriously all the time :) )

Volcanism.
There is evidence that the formation of the Deccan Traps in India, took place at the same time as the dinosaur extinction. Excessive volcanic activity can have significant effects on the climate. The Deccan Traps erupted on a very large scale, and therefore could have had a major impact on the atmosphere at that time. This theory is the main alternative to a meteorite impact, and it can explain many of the associated observations. This includes the shocked quartz and the glassy spherules, see The Impact theory for details of these observations

This one is actually interesting ....
Not so much as an alternative theory, but that the Chicxulub impact caused this huge outflow of lava. I vaguely remember this beingh discussed during my university geology studies. I cant remember the validity of the idea or what the conclusions were.
One could imagine that the major Chicxulub impact caused a huge pulse through the Earth and that pulse resulted in the Deccan Traps eruptions ( their location being close to the opposite side of the earth, where the pulse energy would come to a focus).